The game looks boring to me. I liked Sacred 1, although I never finished. It was nice to play on a network with my kids. But the whole sword & sorcery theme is getting stale for me. I think The Witcher may be my last fantasy purchase.

I'd like more RPGs in different times, or with a different cast of characters. I'd like world environments that do not even have the same properties as our world. Gravity? Cellular growth? Evolution? Hmm.

An RPG that takes place in a modern world like ours, but with the understanding that there are a dozen "monster" races that do things like eat us, would make for fun gameplay. I'd love to run down a killer zarfan beast with my SUV. Or what about an RPG in a society where murder is a legal solution for any grief? What kind of warped conversations would you have with people? How weird would it be to experience your own mother sitting you down and telling you that they intend to kill your sister because she's a bit bratty? Can you negotiate? If not, do you save your sister? What if your sister accepts her death, and now wants to kill you for disobeying your parents?

What about a world where religious concepts never existed? The word "heaven" doesn't exist. Nothing good is ever called "heavenly." Undead & ghosts do not exist. Otherworldly power is a concept that is foreign and strange. No clerics, no worship. What would that society look like?

Anyway, sorry I got off on a tangent. I'm tired of swashbuckling games, and wondering about alternatives to "more of the same."

I hate to say it but theese videos did not make me that impressed.
Granted, the primary aspect they show off is the animation of Sera, which might not be important for the game. My issue is that the movements looks very unnatural/amateurish, mostly thanks to the models animation do not match the model's movement across the ground.

In the dungeon and Zeltdorf movie the Sera model moves around in circles at a high pace, but she is not twitching or alternating her moves to strike which creates an artificial feel. Instead you see her feet sliding over the ground when there's just no force that would allow her to do that, as if they just redirect the model before they start the strike animation. That was ok in 2d but it looks wierd in 3d.

The "slow" animation show her jump up and twist in the air, although she do not complete a full twist, but stop halfway through to strike. Realistically, she should have continued the full turn until the ground stops the movement again. Again it looks like they just redirected her before a strike.

Overall the spinner animation just looks silly, unneccessary and out of place atm. Sera do not actually need to take off the ground since doing so would by normal consequences have you killed. Have you ever seen Jet Li or Jackie Chan keep jumping right up in the air for no reason?

You can see that they are not really used to 3d games that have a greater demand to upkeep the illusion that what we see is "real".

In all fairness it should be mentioned that the 2 most difficult things to get "right" in computer animation are the eyes and gravity. I'm not talking about ragdoll physics but the actual impacts that gravity have on the physical world (e.g. what's the visual difference between a 50 kg woman jumping 1 meter up into the air and a 150 kg man doing the same) …

But JemyM does have a point: The videos provided are not the best examples of seamless integration of animated characters in the world environment. However, there are mitigating circumstances that might apply to these vidoes. First of all: the spinning attack could be a "special attack"/skill (I can't remember what it is called in Sacred) which would explain the "needless" jumping show-off like maneuver. Second of all: Sacred 2 is still a work in progress which could explain the somewhat disjointed move from one animation sequence to the other (e.g. first attack is towards the top of the screen and the next attack is towards to bottom of the screen and somehow the Seraphim has to turn around between attacks but without breaking the pace of the attacks hence the "floating" over the ground issue) …

But then again, I might just be leaking hot air …

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aboyd: Interesting ideas but there are 2 major obstacles in the way of them coming to fruition:

1) It requires a LOT of innovation and huge cojones to walk so far from the beaten path that it will be VERY difficult to find funding/publishers for such a project the way the industry works today (i.e. the EA ethos: Why buy a new horse when you can still beat the one you already have).

2) What you're describing sounds very interesting in a PnP environment where only the imagination sets the limits but in a computer environment the boundaries are very different and it ultimately comes down to what is the computer able to do and what can't be done, at least not yet. The simple factor that a computer can NOT adapt to the current situation like a human mind can do (at least not until proper Artificial Intelligence becomes a reality) makes the possible gameplay elements rather limited and the dialogue driven experience you're describing is simply not a viable option … yet.

— "Chess in particular had always annoyed him. It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the kings lounged about doing nothing that always got to him; if only the pawns united, maybe talked the rooks around, the whole board could've been a republic in a dozen moves."- Commander Vimes in Thud! by Terry Pratchett

The original Sacred had a certain quirky charm and some nice concepts, like the ability to ride horses and still fight. I also liked the idea of a huge seamless world, but not at the cost of content density.

The quest design was boring, the character balance was non-existant, the technical bugs were appalling, and on the whole Sacred was mostly a missed opportunity.

Sacred 2 will be no different.

The only game that came close to Diablo (1 and 2) standards was Titan Quest, and even that couldn't truly compare to the masters of the hack and loot genre.

Sacred was made of the remains of the full-scale CRPG called "Armaklion" that was diue to be made for the Dark Eye RPG system (Drakensang is nowadays made for this system, too).

Insiders can still find very well remains of the Dark Eye universe in that game.

I'm still sad that Icarion went bancrupt, Ascaron bought the remains, and made an action game out of what should've been an *real* RPG.

("Real" = IMHO. I don't like action games anymore, although I played Sacred through just to see what has become of Armalion.)

We have a saying in German that I translate as "feeding pigs with pearls". Sacred felt to me that way. The whole design was concentrated on and optimized for an non-action game, for example it just had an imho far too detailed world.

I remember the comment of one of the main designers of Armalion, learning that this was to become an action game. He was under shock.
I'm one of very few people who have been there with Armalion from the beginning, I know what I'm talking about.

I'm kind of sad to see that Sacred has become so successful.

Nevertheless, I must admit that the graphics of Sacred 2 do look good.

Originally Posted by Gorath
You shouldnīt say such a thing. Every successful RPG is good for the genre. Even if itīs only a Diablo clone. Plus Iīm pretty sure a couple of Armalion developers stayed to form Studio 2.

Well, I was argueing from the point of view of someeone who is just disappointed that the remains of a full-blown "real" RPG was re-built inti an action thing, no matter for which reasons.

A think only very few people really noticed is, that Ascaron AT FIRST *really* had planned to continue the development of the "Armalion" game !

During the course of time, German magazines couldn't stop comparing it with Blizzards games (German mags are notorious for measuering EVERY RPG with either Baldur's Gate OR Blizzards Action-RPGs !), and at one certain point Ascaron changed the mind.

My theory is, that a) Ascaron broke down under the pressure set up by the constant and neverending comparison with D2 and LOD, or b) that comparison actually brought the people of Ascaron to the idea of developing an Action-RPG instead (which could - if succeeed - mean a LOT of cash !).